Do you Hear the Bells? The Second Floor Files, Case One
by Sloth Manifest
Summary: Those on the second floor of the Ministry of Magic are charged with a solemn task; To root out and capture those who abuse their gifts with dark intent. After five years of hunting the remains of Voldemort's Death Eaters ace auror Harry Potter had thought that legacy finally extinct. A new case shakes this hope, but is it yet another Death Eater, or someone much more sinister?
1. Chapter 1

**The Second Floor Files  
**

_Case One_

Don't You Hear the Bells?

Harry had to thank whoever triggered that smokescreen curse on their way in. It might have been unprofessional, he'd have to reprimand them later, but it forced him to use a bubblehead charm. That blessedly spared him from smelling… this. The floorboards creaked behind him.

"Bloody hell."

"Your catch-phrase has never been more appropriate Ron." You got used to seeing chunks of flesh and splashes of blood as an Auror, but this… this was careful, deliberate, mutilation. It was so much more than a flayed body. It was what those spiraling blood runes and exposed tendons implied. Magical torture of the darkest, most obscene sort. Disgust tugged at his lip, but he kept his emotions in check. Barely. His glasses flashed toward straw-headed girl who had entered with Ron.

"Bettine. Send a message back to the ministry. I want someone from Rituals and Occult." Bettine nodded grimly, but also with a slight look of relief as she stepped back out of the dimly lit cottage. She was the new girl; this was only her second outing under their tutelage. Harry glanced back at the flayed corpse._ Welcome to the Aurors, lady._

"What are you thinking Harry?" Ron squatted down to look at one of the graying organs, which had been carefully removed from the body and laid in a pattern around the room. "Definitely dark arts?"

"You're joking?"

"What? Could just be a nutter. Muggles do this sort of thing too."

Harry raised an eyebrow as if to say 'You're the Muggle expert now?' Ron put on his best indignant face.

"I saw it on the telly! 'Mione had something about muggle serial killers on."

"Hermione did. Right." He tore his eyes away from the bloody mess and looked in the less obvious corners, scanning as he spoke. "Or maybe you've been staying up all night with the television on, falling asleep on the couch and leaving your wife in bed alone." He heard Ron groan.

"Can you two, y'know, not discuss my inadequacies behind my back-"

"We're friends too."

" –besides. You two grew up with television! I never had muggle entertainment, and if a boring life without magic does one thing it teaches people how to entertain themselves. I have a bit of catching up to do."

"Ron."

"Fine. I'll ease up a bit on the telly, but-"

"Ron, look!" Harry's fist gripped his wand so hard it shook. Ron scrambled to his feet at the yell and jabbed his wand out blindly. Then he saw what Harry looked at. It was scratched in the wall, but in neat, careful cuts. A string of words, and a picture; A skull with a snake tongue.

Two by Two and

Saint by Saint

And don't you hear

The bells they clank

and stutter

Uvulas yanked

they kneel in filth and clutter

they rock and totter

One by one in time with the slaughter

And they blubber, save us

oh Potter Save us

"Th'hell does that mean. Is that…?"

"My name, yeah. And the Dark Mark. I thought we got all these bastards. I thought we were done with this."

"Harry," Ron said, his voice soft and tangled with memory and meaning only they shared, "I don't think we'll ever be done with it all. But we can be done with this. Let's give it to someone else."

Harry's eyes were dark for a few moments as he glared at the scratched writing.

"We'll be done with this case when whoever did this is carving messages onto the walls of Azkaban. " He scratched thoughtfully at his forehead. "But I think we need to call in an outside consultant for this riddle."

"Oh, come on Harry, you know I don't like taking my work home with me."

Bettine Clements knelt outside the picturesque cobblestone cottage, trying to focus on the cool grass against her skin, and her breathing, and the warmth of the sun and... anything but the churning in her gut. She really needed to get herself together. She couldn't let Potter see her like this, especially after that embarrassment of a first case. He had seemed understanding. If he was going to give her clearance to become a full-fledged Auror, though, he was going to have to seem more from her than cursing her own legs and dancing uncontrollably into a bin. If only-

"What's up?" A hand placed itself on her shoulder. She looked up to see Harry grinning at her. If he looked a little pale it was nothing on her complexion.

"I, er..."

"Picking flowers at your age?" His eyes twinkled slightly before turning to the misty mountain ridge that dominated their horizon. She took the moment to breathe deep and get to her feet.

"Actually, it was a bug Mr. Potter. Always had a soft spot for beetles. Never could brew a good endless momentum potion because of it. Live ingredients." _Stop babbling! _she scolded herself wildly. He turned his gaze back to her and began fishing in his robes.

"You got that message out to the ministry?" he asked, bringing his wand up.

"Yes, sir."

"Good." His wand left a green-yellow afterglow as its tip traced a pattern in the air. "As long as you do your job before going beetle watching we won't have any issues." The spell left a tingle in the air as it locked into place. She recognized it as a ward of some kind, but nothing she'd ever been taught in school or training.

"Sir? What was that for?"

"Its sort of anti-muggle ward a friend of mine cooked up. It's a bit more... efficient than most. I'll teach it to you when we have some down time." His next course of action seemed to be transfiguring the hedge row to have small red berries. _Get one answer receive one question._ "Ron is canvassing the rest of the house, and he'll deal with R&O when they show up. Once thats all done he'll put up an anti-apparation charm. It is standard procedure in cases like this. We need to keep muggles and wizards out. "

"And us?"

"We? We are going to follow up on the owner of this cottage; a mister Fuller. Anthony Fuller." He blew air out his nose in a kind of resigned sigh. "Then, when the lab gets us the body's identity we are going to inform the next of kin."

"I was under the impression that was someone from MLEO Patrol's job, isn't it?"

"It's a quirk of mine, Bettine. The higher-ups think it makes me too, er, 'Emotionally Invested'," he grimaced to show what he thought of that, "But Its something I need to do. I... just do. It is important to remind yourself who the real victims are. Who you are doing this for." Bettine could not quite work out what emotion was staring out at her from behind those brilliantly green eyes. Before she could figure out what to say back Harry gave a turn and cracked out of existence. Curiosity stopped her from following him immediately. Instead she wandered over to the hedge, plucked a berry and held it up close to her face. She dropped with a shrill yelp.

It wasn't a berry - not really. Berries didn't have pupils.


	2. Chapter 2

"Huh," Harry quirked an eyebrow, "Maybe he is a real person."

He and Bettine stood on a narrow stoop, muggle jackets pulled tight against the chill wind and grey skies. It was always disorienting, apparating long distances. From a rather pleasant April afternoon in south Wales to a chilly one threatening rain on the outskirts of Manchester. They had made a short stop in at the ministry to confirm Mr. Fuller's address and to get into muggle dress, but otherwise it was a bit of a jolt.

"Why wouldn't he be," Bettine asked.

Harry wrapped his knuckles on the oak door- no knocker or bell to be found- and shrugged.

"Well," he said, "if I was shopping around for a cottage that I was going to cut people up in I'd do it under a false name, wouldn't you?" Her brow scrunched a little at the thought. _So she doesn't like to put herself in the bad guys shoes_, Harry thought, _That's going to hurt her_. He knocked again.

"No... I wouldn't buy one at all. If they were leaving a message for you, they wanted you to find it. So I'd find some summer cottage, slice the blighter up in there, and leave it for the owner to find."

"Hm. But the owner didn't find it. The owner never showed up." So she wasn't averse to thinking like a criminal, just slow to. That, at least, could be improved. He gave another knock. "We'd never have even found it if those muggle teenagers didn't catch a case of the 80s and sneak away from camp for a romantic rendezvous in an abandoned cottage."

"So the killer picked wrong," Bettine said with a shrug. "I still like my theory." Harry had to laugh.

"You sound like a young Harry Potter."

"Thank you, sir."

"Not a compliment. _Homenum Revelio._" Harry's wand tip flared with magic, the detection spell overloading with feedback from the dense surrounding housing. He struggled briefly, sorting through the information flooding his brain. "Well there's definitely someone home, but they aren't answering."

"How can you... there are too many people around, how can you narrow the spell like that?"

"I can't. Maybe others could, but I don't narrow it, I just deal with the overload." He grinned, and raised his wand back up. "I've always been more of a brute force kind of guy. Ready?"

"Ye-wait. What?"

"_Ostilisumovi._"

The door reacted as if a pissed off giant had just punted it; its hinges snapped, the wood cracked, and it exploded inward, tumbling down the entry hall like a pinwheel.

"What the hell!" Bettine's wand sparked in surprise. "We could have just unlocked it!" Harry said nothing. The door was barely settled on the tile floor before he moved purposefully inward. "The muggles will've heard that!"

"Corners, rookie." His voice was stern, calm, but still carried the weight of a rebuke. Her mind slipped out of its shock and let her training take over. She went in wand first, stupefy on the precipice of her lips, and, yes, she checked her corners. It was a small living space,a living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom all on one floor. They cleared it in minutes with not a soul to be found.

"You spooked him," Bettine hissed when they met in the living room. "He ran because you blasted his bloody door in." She was more angry than scared for the first time since seeing the flayed body. The two emotions quickly swapped when she laid eyes on her superior. Harry moved in short, quick spurts, his breath was shallow and his eyes on fire. "What's wrong?"

"I felt him on the other side of the door," he spat. "I should have knocked him arse over tit with that breach hex."

She processed that.

"So... he disapparated? Isn't he supposed to be a muggle?"

"This place was supposed to be a lot of things." He rubbed at his forehead irritatedly. "Tell me, what do you see?"

Bettine looked around the sitting room.

"Seems normal enough."

"You are not a nosey relative, Miss Clements," he snapped. "You are an Auror. Give me an assessment."

She decided she did not like pissed off Harry. Not one bit. But she did take another look, and this time she _assessed. _The room was of medium size, lightly furnished. It smelled of damp wood and indefinable must, like a tool shed. She traced a line in the burgundy carpet with her shoe, revealing particulate deep in the fiber. Sawdust from the breech, maybe? She moved her attention elsewhere, focusing on the furnishings themselves. Small table by the window, adorned with a single lamp. Two chairs and a loveseat. A chess board with the pieces set up mid-game. A chest. A bookshelf. She ran her eyes over the spines of the books, scanning for a title that stuck out. Nothing. Just a lot of muggle history books. Whoever lived here seemed to have a soft spot for victorian England. She waved the trunk open with her wand, revealing reams of blank parchment. She shrugged.

"I'm sorry, Sir. I just don't..." Then it snapped into place. It wasn't just what was here, it was also what wasn't. The history books, the chess board, the lamp, it all pointed toward a muggle. Bettine was a second generation Wizard, but she'd always got on with her extended non-magical relations well, and she'd spent more than a few holidays roughing it muggle style with her cousins. She applied what she knew about muggle life to this picture and it did not match up. There was no telephone, no television, and no computer. In fact, now that she looked closer the lamp was kerosine. There was not a scrap of electronics in the place. Yet when she applied her knowledge of the wizarding world it did not match either; the books were of muggle events, the chess board was mundane, no fireplace for floo travel, and there was even a butane lighter lying next to the lamp.

"Oh," she breathed. "Its a front. So Fuller wasn't real after all?"

"Well, someone was in here. Maybe they were expecting us, maybe not, but they were definitely living here for some time. The wick on the lamp is charred, the chessboard has been used, the floor has crumbs all through it." Harry took a knee and ran a hand through the shag, gathering some of it up. He took a close look at the crumbs, shrugged, and sprinkled them into a small pouch. "I'm guessing Fuller is a name used to purchase muggle properties. This could be one of many hideouts. I'll run these crumbs by the dungeon back at the ministry, but barring that this particular thread has run its course."

"Can't we make an inquiry into the muggle bank his account belongs to and see what sort of information they have?"

"That just might work." Harry sounded almost impressed. "With magic you can falsify a lot of information but he could have screwed up somewhere along the line. Good thinking."

"Its routine," she said, uncomfortable with the praise.

"Yes, but you do this for a few years and routines get worn away from lack of results. Still, they were put in place for a reason. We wouldn't want my cynicism to lose us a vital clue."

At least he was smiling again. In that moment, after he realized his mark had gotten away, he was frightening. Dangerous. You grow up hearing stories about the Boy Who Lived, about his heroics and heartbreaks and his triumphs. Bettine devoured those stories as a little girl, creating this mythical hero to measure her life against. The real /human/ person in front of her, he was the simply the man who killed the most dangerous Dark Wizard in recent history. He was the man who spent the last six years of his life hunting down what remained of the Death Eaters and their followers, fighting for every capture and kill with his life in the balance. He was at times kind, self-deprecating, and even wise. But now she had seen a glimpse of what his enemies saw; angry, impulsive, and cunning. Rules and regulations were a means to an end. His enemies' end.

She shivered slightly as stood preparing to apparate to the ministry. The chilly breeze creeping in from the flat's splintered entrance only half the reason.

-CRACK-


	3. Chapter 3

"It isn't nothing I've ever seen," the guy from Rituals and Occult muttered.

"Well I wouldn't think so," Ron said, "Dark Wizards are always coming up with something new."

"Nah, it ain't just that. Rituals follow a certain logic based on what you want to get out of it. There are certain fundamentals they all have." The guy, Ron thought he had muttered the name 'Brax' on his way in, dug a thumb into his beard and attacked an itch savagely. "I'm thinkin' this fellow was just straight up mad."

"Wh-bu-" Ron sputtered, " It's got runes and, and... pentagrams and everything!"

"See that rune there?" Brax, or was it Dax, pointed a thick knuckled forefinger at one boxy sort of glyph. "Old Norse. And that? Muscovite. It's like someone skimmed chapter one of 'Runes and Glyphs, an Overview' and made something scary lookin'. I'll record everything here, but that'll be my official judgement; Gibberish."

Ron shook his head slightly. He actually agreed with the man, or he had. He trusted his partner's instincts though. There might be some smarter but there wasn't a witch or wizard alive with a better gut than Harry Potter.

"What about the dark mark. No muggle would know that symbol." He said it half to himself but Flax answered.

"Sure. But it hasn't got nothing to do with the ritual itself. It's isolated, see these symbols here? Basically, they're brackets. They mark off an area for neutral iconography. So maybe he _was_ a wizard, hell if I know, but he didn't know bollocks about real ritual runes."

That was it then. They had squeezed every bit of evidence they were going to get out of the shack. Now they had to interpret it, his least favorite part. Ron, like countless before him, had wrongly thought he'd left homework by the wayside when he graduated. Fortunately, as it happened certain other factors remained constant as well.

"Well then… Grax was it?"

"Max."

"That's a weird name." Ron gathered his cloak around him and made for the door. "Cheers, Max, I've got to pay the wife a visit."

It was a short trip with apparation, but he spent much of the time fidgeting on the stoop. Hermione was working from home these past few weeks, and had made it very clear that it did not mean she could be interrupted at every turn. Well, technically she was on maternity leave, but you try giving the woman a vacation.

He was just about to knock when her voice sliced through his introspection, sharp as any blade.

"Are you coming in or not Ron."

He found her sitting legs crossed on the kitchen floor, shuffling parchment from pile to pile.

"Crookshanks knock over your files again?" he asked tentatively. She glanced up, and Ron could see the dark rings under her eyes quite plainly.

"No, no. The desk was too small. Er… here, have a … seat. " She shuffled a stack over and patted the kitchen tile with a wry grin. She was an odd woman, his wife. Last week she was nothing but spines and teeth, but since then she had received an owl with some inquiries from the law department. Now he finds her exhausted, and with a playful smile. That look caused familiar warmth to spread in his chest, but it brought worry rather than the happiness he was used to. The smile was genuine, but thin. It contrasted with the dark rings under eyes and the rasp in her voice. He couldn't help but to glance at her stomach, the swell of pregnancy becoming more obvious every day.

"This is too much 'Mione." He didn't sit. "Why don't you have a lie down, hm?" Her grin faded into a frown.

"Is that what you came home early for? Hectoring me back into bed?"

Ron grimaced at the accusation and all it implied. "That isn't fair."

"What isn't fair, Ron," she replied her voice growing shrill, "Is that a mother will be put into Azkaban for murder simply because she's too poor and too _muggle_ to fight the charges. If I don't-"

"This isn't even your case," He insisted. The riddle had gone out of his head at the sight of her. He could feel the argument coming on, and it had been for quite some time.

"No one knows the muggle statutes better than me. If I cannot find a loophole, a precedent here somewhere-"

"No Hermione, no one does. But it's their job to. You can't do everyone's homework for them anymore." He let some of his deep anger into his voice, at her, her job and himself. It was a puff of steam next to the roiling volcano inside.

"This isn't about me Ron. This is someone's life. Someone who won't even have a proper trial because they aren't magic and had the gall to marry a wizard."

"And get caught with a dead body." He regretted saying it before it even left his lips.

"That isn't how it works! She needs to have a** trial**." There was real fire in her now, it wasn't just frustration talking. "A thousand-year old law says that anyone with a wand is guaranteed a trial under magic law, and instead of seeing the spirit of the law as inten-" It was getting away from him fast. This was not a fight about inequality.

"Then change the law! Change it _after your daughter is born_. This is the third case you've taken on!"

"I can do both, _Ronald._"

"Don't call me Ronald like you're my mother, you know I hate that."

"And don't treat me like you're my father. I know my limits, I don't need a lecture I need support."

"I'm supposed to support you am I? Support you in staying away eighteen hours, not eating right, supporting you as you do other people's work for them while you are pregnant and on leave? Am I to hold your hand all the way to a psychotic breakdown?"

As Ron stood catching his breath the heat of their anger seemed to drain from the room, leaving behind a chill that was much more unsettling.

"Why are you here, Ron?" Hermione asked softly. Soft, like a tiger's footsteps. He remembered in a flash the reason. The riddle. And just as suddenly he knew he couldn't ask her for help. Not only because he would look like the world's biggest twat bringing it up now, but he realized, with a sick sinking feeling in his chest, how unfair it was to her.

"I… was just checking in on my way back to the ministry," he said flatly. "I was worried about you." If he was being honest he did enjoy that flicker of doubt behind her eyes. The air seemed too thick for words now, neither saying anything as he picked his wand off the table and walked out the door.

He paused as the door clicked shut behind him. That… could have went better. Things would settle back down, they always did. If their last hundred fights were any indication neither of them would speak of this the next day. Maybe that was part of the problem. He groaned and pressed his fingers into his eyes. One thing was certain, he'd be analysing the riddle alone.

_Fine,_ he thought._ I'm an auror, this is my job. I can do it._

He couldn't even convince himself. Hermione, he knew, would have headed straight for the library. The ministry book repository it was then.


End file.
